


Papercuts

by FadingArchive



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Blood and Gore, Car Accidents, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's not that big though, Kanaya is a coffee fairy, Karkat runs a book store, M/M, Recovery, Shhh don't tell, sticky notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-06-02 08:24:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6559243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FadingArchive/pseuds/FadingArchive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What's the 'Fuck List'?"<br/>"Don't look at that."<br/>"Is that my name on there?"<br/>"I said don't look at it!  You can wipe that stupid smirk off your limp miserable face, it's not what it sounds like."</p>
<p>Karkat doesn't believe in happiness, but would like to.<br/>Dave just wants to stop dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Nepeta. Just give me the fucking coffee.”

“Shhh, not yet Karkitty! Today... today is...” She crinkles her brow and waves her sparkly Hello Kitty pen in lopsided air circles over the wrinkled paper. “Hey Karkitty, what’s the date?”

“You’re going to make me late.”

“Kanaya? What’s the date?”

“I believe it is the seventh. Nepeta, I applaud your enthusiasm but I really think you need to finish up sorting the–” 

“Ah, the seventh! This one sounds good. Ahem.  Cancer: Find what is important to you and hold it close. Connect with someone you haven’t heard from in a while. You can be a little overly emotional at times, but use this to show others that you care. Ehh, blah blah blah.... It gets a little boring. Tonight: Get more exercise.” Silence settles over the counter.

“...Did my horoscope actually fucking tell me to spend precious moments of my rapidly diminishing lifespan hauling my meatsack around in a weak attempt at fitness? Did it just call me fat?”

“Karkitty, it’s not like it can see you–” You interrupt her by flailing your arms in her general direction, causing Nepeta to huff and sink down to her elbows on the scuffed countertop. The kitten whiskers drawn on her cheeks tilt down as she pouts. 

“What sad, demented soul in a cubical wrote this piece of blasphemy? I do not get overemotional. I have a fucking heart of steel. But yes, my date with Nora Roberts’ novels is long overdue and as for what is “important” to me; coffee. Coffee is important to me. I am a paying customer and I want my caffeinated swill now.” Your impressive words appear to have little effect on the young woman behind the counter, but she heaves another sigh and swivels around to throw your order together. By now she’s had your preferences memorized, and goes through the motions with the sort of mindless grace and ease you wish you had. She returns with warm cup in hand, emitting a sharper scent of the delicious aroma diffused throughout the little shop.

“It wouldn’t kill mew to open up,” she sniffs, “I mean, mew might act like you’re pushing eighty but you still look like a Millennial. I bet you could have toms fighting to get their claws into mew.”

“Haha. No. This is a conversation I refuse to have in a public place–” “It’s just me and Kan, there’s literally no one else here.” “–with you. I have a shop of my own to run, and I don’t know why I still come to this hole in the wall where the barristas refuse to hand over what is rightfully mine. Gimme.” Nepeta scoots your poison of choice towards you, and the dimples on her tanned cheeks deepen in mirth. Her green apron, riddled with old coffee stains, matches her eyes in the same way that Kanaya’s does. Kanaya’s is spotless, however, and in all the years you’ve been coming here to this so-called “hole in the wall” you’ve never seen her spill once.

Speaking of Kanaya, her voice dryly resonates from your left. “Your patronage is what keeps us in the black, dear. Whatever would become of us without you?” 

“Suffer.” You fight with your wallet to cough up your last wad of dollar bills. Victory. “Suffer and die before me.”

“I think we’ll pass! Are you going to be okay going out in that?” Nepeta has a small grin settled on her lips, but both she and Kanaya are eyeing the bruising clouds as the first few raindrops audibly smack against the cracked pavement outside.

Kanaya’s fingers brush your shoulder, and you turn to face green eyes darkened with worry. “We could lend you an umbrella, if you like. I would hate to see you get soaked on your way back.”

“Fuck it. I’ll be fine. The last thing I need right now is to be caught with Nep’s Hello-Kitty monstrosity of a water deflection utensil,” you say with a pointed look at the woman in question. The cat lover sheepishly giggles in reply.

Clutching your holy beverage close, you exit the familiar warmth of the shop and step into drizzling gusts a great deal colder than you were expecting. You knew you shouldn’t have indulged Leijon and her current infatuation with horoscopes. Which are ridiculous practically by definition. If it were anyone else, odds are you would have brushed them off and never returned. But that tiny coffee shop holds pretty much all that is left of your friends from over the years. Kanaya, Aradia, Nepeta, Equius... (Okay maybe not Zahhak. The guy creeps you out). You’ve known them all since highschool, and while most of your companions split off and ollied out with no more than vague promises to call you later, they were the ones who stayed in the decaying shell of a city with you. Kanaya inherited the property and turned it into the hidden gem it is today, armed with only keen aesthetic sense and the Maryam coffee magic that seeps through her family’s veins. 

The little bookstore you run is located only a few blocks from here, a fact you suppose you should be grateful for. That doesn’t stop you from hunching over and offering a few choice words at the universe which decided to gift you with this stunning display of shitty timing. 

It starts raining harder.

A car passes on your left, and you have to leap to the side to avoid the cascade of grimy water surging over the sidewalk. If anyone asks, that was a manly war cry. Which did not come from you. Nope.

The light dims even more as the sun begins to sink behind already overcast skies. Despite the oncoming spring, the days remain short and chilly for the most part. It is your least favorite time of year (you ignore the fact that you loudly proclaim how you despise whatever season it is year round). The douchewaffles who enjoy this kind of weather must be closeted masochists. You bet Zahhak is enjoying himself. 

Rain drips down the collar of your jacket to soak your shirt. The old sneakers you threw on before you embarked on your coffee crusade are filled with yet more water. Your socks are wet. Your jeans are wet. Your hair is sticking all over your face, making it annoyingly hard to see. Rain has now been put back on the Fuck List, after a brief stint of pleasant showers you did not entirely loathe. But this is the last straw and you have no patience to spare for such a shit trumpet of a repeat offender. 

You are halfway there.

Coffee is your only true friend in this world. Always here when you need it. Warm. Delicious. Taking little sips in between wind gusts powers you through as you begin marching uphill.

The presence of another pedestrian vaguely registers in the back of your mind as you rest briefly beneath an overhang before crossing the road.

They are already crossing the road when you get there.

 

They do not make it to the other side.

 

Headlights. Rain. The scream of rubber on pavement.

Flesh hitting metal. A solid thunk as something passes under the first pair of tires.

Everything stops for just a moment.

There is a sharp turn only a few meters up the street. Everyone takes it too fast. The rain makes it hard to see, but the bright lights stamping violet afterimages into your retinas also reveals the large black monster truck in the middle of the road that they belong to. The driver is nothing more than a amorphous dark mass in the front seat.

They shift. Rev the engine.

“No. Nononono DON’T YOU DARE YOU FUCKER GET BACK HERE–” Your mouth reacts faster than anything else, and the rest of your body violently lurches back into motion.

But you are too slow, too far away to stop them from rolling over the figure on the ground and gunning it down the slicked black street.

You hesitate for a fraction of a second, eyes still on the retreating vehicle, before jerkily stumbling towards the person on the ground. There is a burning sensation on your legs and shoes, and the coffee cup is no longer in your hand.

White. Black. Red all over.

You don’t want to look.

Fuck.

The red converse unsettle you. The red and white baseball shirt tightens the coil of fear knotted in your gut. But it’s the black aviators tangled in mussed white locks that stops your heart cold.

You know them.

It’s that fucking kid.

It’s Dave.

The realization freezes you again. It takes you a moment to notice the movement.

Fingers jerk and curl. His body spasms with every unnatural heave of breath before he arches his back like he’s trying to lift himself off the pavement. 

But everything’s wrong.

His spine is bending in all the wrong ways, and somehow his legs are still moving. Color tints your vision in feathered smears around him as red diffuses onto the dark road and trails into the drain.

You fingers are stripping off your coat before you realize it, and you bend down at his side. “Strider? Strider just– just stop moving and listen to me. Can you even hear me? Fuck.” It’s hard to discern what exactly is wrong with him in the dimness, except that everything is messed up in your head. 

He doesn’t have a coat. What fucking idiot takes a walk in the rain without a coat? 

You wrap your old bomber jacket around him as best you can and reach for your back pocket. There's nothing. Past you was such an optimistic idiot, thinking going out for coffee would be a harmless little excursion and you wouldn't need your phone. 

Do you run to one of the nearby shops and hope someone is there? There aren’t any houses for another three blocks or so, and at that point your own place is closer. You don’t want to leave him here by himself, especially not in the road. Aren’t you supposed to not move injured people? But you don’t exactly have a choice.

You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re doing. You don’t want to hurt him. You don’t want him to die because you fucked up any chance he has left for pulling through this shit. Through the rain you can hear the slight gurgle of his inhale over your own panicked breathing. Okay, hurry up. You slide one arm around his shoulders and another lower on his torso. He’s surprisingly easy to slide onto the drenched grass at the side of the road. When you pull your arms back, fingers come free slick with warm red. 

You can’t move any farther away because he’s got a hand fisted in your collar. His eyes are open and his face unreadable.

“Strider, it’s Vantas. Do you recognize me? Strider? ‘M just moving you a little, you got fucked up pretty bad but everything’s going to be fucking dandy in a minute once I get some help, ok? ...Dave– Dave let go I have to go call 911.” His grip is strong for someone who appears to be swing dancing on death’s door. Your brow furrows when your fingers fail to pry his away from your shirt. 

“Shhh, shhh. It’s gonna be ok.” You frantically murmur soft shooshing noises, despite the fact that he hasn’t made any sounds besides choked breathing the whole time. He doesn’t relax. Suddenly he tightens his grip and nearly throws you on top of him when he heaves upwards, stretching the neck of your cheap t-shirt to lever himself up.

How the fuck is he doing that. You could feel the out of place vertebrae in his back, twisted and torn out of position. The sound of his sneakers, scrabbling for purchase on wet grass and finding none, joins the soft symphony of sounds you instinctively associate with the dying. But they are moving when they should not. He hauls himself up on shattered bones. Leans in close, near enough that you feel his uneven breath on your neck.

His eyes sort of look red. You tell yourself it’s just a reflection.

They are locked on your own, but seem out of focus and you honestly can’t tell if he even recognizes you. 

 

“Don’t be afraid of me.”

The sound, soft and hoarse, is almost drowned out by the rain. You take him in, the dying boy with blood on his face, holding onto you in the dark like he expects you to try and run away.

Your mouth decides to bypass brain controls. “Fuck that. Karkat Vantas is afraid of jack shit in this world, and that’s something you can take to your grave you insipid asshole.” What the fuck are you saying. That is the biggest shitsmoking lie you’ve ever uttered in your life. “I’m not leaving you here, so you can drill that idea out of your skull and drop it down a well.” 

Wrapping the jacket tighter around him, you slide your arms back around him and lean him against your torso. Deep breath. “I’m not leaving you, kiddo,” you whisper, softening your tone.

With gritted teeth you stand up, bringing him with you. He doesn’t make a sound besides a sharp intake of breath. The fact that he isn’t screaming comforts you a bit, until the fear that he’ll just keel over without a word takes hold. 

You take a small step forward, and almost cry with relief when he stumbles along with you. He’s surprising light even with you half carrying him. His head hits your shoulder and rests there, but you don’t stop moving. 

Even when your muscles are burning and you can barely make out the path in front of you, you never stop walking. Don’t stop. Don’t think.

 

Just take him home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually despise coffee, and horoscopes piss me off for some weird reason.  
> Also: Don't move injured people. It's a major nono.  
> This was meant to be done by 4/12. Then 4/13. Oh well. First fic, so of course I had to write DaveKat.  
> Constructive criticism and feedback would be lovely.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Exams are sort of consuming my soul right now. I split this into two chapters, so the other half should be up soon!  
> (Oh, and thank you to all those wonderful people who commented or gave kudos. Really. Here, have a heart. <3)

You found Dave Strider on the seventh. A Thursday.

That night you closed the shop early for the first time in three years.

It was also the first time you broke down sobbing in five.

You didn’t know what to do. He obviously needed medical attention, no matter what weird shit was going on. But when you had your landline in hand, staring at the dimly glowing buttons, your fingers froze. 

A little voice in the back of your head whispered that something was off, that this wasn’t normal, just look at him do you think handing him off to a crowd of strangers will do anything to help him? Another told you that hurt people belong in hospitals and you are no doctor and this is none of your fucking business anyway, just leave him.

You put down the phone, but you still aren’t sure if you made the right choice.

After dragging him to the couch (it was closer than your bed), you robotically cleaned everything you could reach. Your clothes were ruined, and the stains still haven’t come out after three washings. It escapes your comprehension how his phone survived without even a nick in the screen, but it does you jack squat anyway. The kid had no contacts in his phone. None. There was no one else to call.

Sometime in the small hours of the morning you drifted off next to him on the floor, having spent the night tensely hunched by his side. You were afraid to look away for even a moment in case the slight rise and fall of his chest stopped. 

You spend the next night in the same manner. And the next. 

You don’t even venture out of the upstairs except to slap a scribbled sticky note on the outside of your door informing your valued shoppers that the bookstore is closed for the time being, please fuck off. Your customer pool – while small – is loyal, so you don’t think they’ll drop you if you close up shop for a few days. Your overall finances might not fare so well (you’re a small business, every day counts towards paying the bills) but you’ll execute screaming cartwheels across that bridge when you come to it.

It is now Monday the eleventh. Dave Strider has still not woken up. 

You were fully prepared to continue your fitful vigil, until your hearing picks up the faint sound of three dainty raps against your doorframe.

“–arkat? Karkat, are you there?”

It’s alright, you locked the door today. If you pretend you aren’t home maybe she’ll go away– “Karkat, I’m coming in.” 

You forgot she has a key. Past you was such a moron, handing supreme access of your private sanctum to the most nosy individual in the entirety of this pathetically small, shriveled, snooping town. It’s too bad you love her to bits.

You jerk off the floor despite the soreness in your legs and hastily slip out the door to the downstairs, with a single glance back at the blanketed heap on the sofa. He’ll probably be alright, you’ve just got to get rid of her quickly.

Kanaya Maryam stands in the doorway of your shop, peering into aisles of stacked books and papers. When she sees you approaching, her lips curve in a small smile. “Ah, he emerges.”

“Keep your snarky comments to yourself, Maryam. I was reading in my room, it’s not like I always have my nosy broad radar set to maximum. You didn’t tell me you were coming.” You feel ill-equipped for this encounter, given that you’re running off of a few hours worth of restless napping and dressed in whatever you could get your hands on. She registers this silently, but does not comment.

“When you didn’t come in for the past few days, I thought I should drop by to see if everything was alright. We were getting a little worried since you hadn’t even set up shop over here, and I was concerned that you had gotten sick walking back from the café last Thursday in the rain. Really, I should have insisted that you take one of our umbrellas.” 

She lifts a paper bag you hadn’t noticed she was holding and sets it on the checkout counter. “This is for you. On the house.”

A rich aroma wafts through the air, mingling with the subtle smell of old books. Hot coffee. Kanaya is too good for you, and you really have no idea why she insists on being your friend. The least you can do is smother your gratitude in insincerity. “I suppose I can set aside my dying morals long enough to take advantage of your abysmal business practices. But I just decided to take a couple days off without making it a federal fucking issue. Everything’s fine.” A careful sip from the cup she hands you reveals it’s the perfect temperature. Hot, but not scalding, and made just the way you like it best.

“You do not look ‘fine.’”

“Can’t you see the youthful sparkle in my eyes? No? Take a closer look then, because this is what happy looks like.” Your voice drops to a mumble when you take another whiff of the scented drink. “Just ‘cause I’m wearing sweatpants doesn’t mean I’m in distress.”

She doesn’t look convinced, but you can’t tell if it’s because she knows something’s wrong or if she truly believes that grey sweats are a cry for help. “I just meant that you seem tired. Are you eating?” You roll your eyes and nod, bumping her shoulder with your own to take the edge off your attitude and remind her that she’s doing the mother hen thing again. 

She finally relaxes and breathes a sigh. “Well. I’m sure the others will be glad to hear no misfortune has befallen you. Whenever you decide to tell me about whatever’s going on, my door is open.” Her painted green lips grant you another, bigger smile as she leans conspiratorially towards your ear. “I’m here if you need help burying the body.”

You flinch so hard you nearly give yourself a new set of coffee burns to match the ones on your thighs. Kanaya looks comically startled by your reaction, and you can almost see the guilt rolling off her in the air.

“Karkat? Oh dear, I’m sorry, it was just a joke, are you alright? Aradia’s been trying to teach me how to use ‘dark humor’ and I’m really no good at all and I keep forgetting how all the jokes go– Oh, hell. Come sit down.” 

Even when uncharacteristically flustered, Kanaya is nothing if not efficient. She drags out a blue beanbag from the corner and pushes you into it. She perches on the edge (as well as anyone can “perch” on a misshapen semi-solid mound) until you tug her into the center with you regardless of the fact that this beanbag is just too small for two full grown adults.

Her hands tentatively flutter around your shoulders, and you are immensely glad when she takes the initiative and pulls you into a hug before you burst into tears for the second time in four days. 

Her arms may be slender, but they are warm and strong and comforting, which is just what you need right now. She makes the fear and strain of uncertainty melt away with every breath. Soft fingers gently comb through your tangled dark hair, and you bury your face in her collar. 

So much better than coffee.

(She stays with you until your breathing finally evens out, just holding you and humming like she did back in highschool after Gamzee left.) 

(It takes you even longer to convince her that her joke wasn’t that bad – no, that’s not why you were crying.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kanaya, you are too sweet, too precious, and I really wish I knew how to write you.  
> Happy early Mother's Day, guys.  
> (And again, do not drag injured people back to your home. Please.)


	3. Chapter 3

Cardsuit sheets. Red-black-white. Open window, no breeze. The scorching sun flares, melting the flesh off your dead, dead bones. Metal on the floor. Metal in your hands. A boy with orange eyes. A man with no eyes at all.

The images bloom in fractured pieces across a white backdrop. 

Too bright. Go away.

Color mushrooms into shapes, buildings, and faces before fading to a monotone grey and fraying back into nonexistence.

Reality drips back slowly between the cracks.

Finding your limbs takes a while. 

That’s okay. Time isn’t something you are capable of following at the moment. 

Sensation stirs in your shoulders and neck, creeping down to your ankles. Your skin and bones feel badly stitched together with cheap polyester thread, the shitty kind that tangles into knots and breaks the second you take it off the spool. You are still unable to feel large swathes of your body.

Until you can, and suddenly everything isn’t so okay anymore.

Your eyes flick open as the other shoe drops and your flesh is burning, unraveling from the inside out. Muscles seize and your vision flickers as you nearly pass out again. 

When the static recedes, you yank your face out of the bitter tasting comforter you’d instinctively sunk your pearly whites into. Grey. Faux-leather. Now adorning exclusive new teeth imprints. 

Fingers twitch in a mixture of relief and pain as the solid block of agony consuming the majority of your anatomy dulls slightly, enough that you can differentiate between the varied kinds of ouchie you are afflicted with. Sharp splinters of pain make their home in your legs and spine, while the flesh along your side and back feels raw and sore. Your skull feels as if it had been recently introduced to the metal bat of an extremely vindictive third grader, and everything is washed down with a dull, pulsing ache that seems to be coming from all over.

There is a thick charcoal blanket thrown on top of you, made out of something comfortingly soft and warm. A cursory glance to the side reveals the presence of the pillow you had probably dumped overboard during your little fit. Also grey. There seems to be a theme.

Unfortunately, your train of thought dissolves when another sensation overrides everything else, sending you sliding to the rough carpet. You ignore the broken-matchstick feeling of your limbs and the inevitable rugburn you’re inflicting on your hands and knees as you scramble on all fours across the room, cozy blanket abandoned. 

Water. Where it is, you need it, where the fuck is the water. 

The weird brightness makes it hard to see, but you manage to make it to a hallway even in your state of irrational panic. Waterwaterwater.  You are so damn thirsty.

The audible sound of your shoulder smacking the wall of a counter heralds your discovery of a new room. A new room with a sink.

Clawing your way up the wooden cabinets, you practically lunge for the faucet, hissing in frustration as your shaking fingers fumble with the slick lever. When you finally manage to get a grip on the handle, you tug it all the way around and shove your whole head under the stream.

Pure fucking bliss.

It’s only after you’ve downed what feels like ten gallons that you pause to catch your breath. Coherent thought slowly starts filtering back into your brain now that your throat resembles living tissue rather than a salted slug in Death Valley.

You squint at the view of the stone counter meeting the washbin, and try not to question why the rest of the room is swimming in the corner of your vision. You don’t know this sink. A little metal crab in the left corner that glares up at you, presenting a yellow scrubbing brush in its claws. None of this matches the crummy sink in your apartment (the faucet isn’t decorated with waterproof bee stickers), and you doubt either of your roommates have spontaneously developed a fondness for grumpy crustaceans. You don’t recall ever stepping foot in this place with the grey couch and grey counters and grey everything. 

It doesn’t seem like there’s anyone else here at first glance (but you could be wrong, they could be right around the corner, watching you, just like Bro was). Not knowing where you are instinctively draws tension to your shoulders. You never thought the lack of bee paraphernalia would be so unsettling. 

It doesn’t hit you until you look down at your hands. Rust brown is laced over the back of your palms, settled in the creases between your fingers and clinging to the edges of your nails. And then things start falling into place and it’s so depressingly familiar that you nearly laugh. This is supposed to be ironic, right? Or maybe it’s not, you don’t know anymore. 

You slide down to the cool tiles with a soft thump and a huff of pain. 

 

No more **D** e **a** d D **a** v **e** s. N **o** mo **re**. That’s what you said, **rig** ht **?**

You promised.

Haha. Ha. **L** i **a** r. 

 

You did it again. 

And this time you must have fucked up bad, because it still hurts so much and you don’t know where you are and it’s too goddamn bright – 

That’s ‘cause your shades are gone, dumbass.

Oh. Shit. 

You lift a hand to your face. They’re gone. Someone saw you. They saw your eyes, saw all the... the mess...

They took your shades away. 

Fighting the sudden wave of icy panic in your gut – fuck, fuckfuck, Houston, we have a problem – you curl up with your back to the corner of the row of floor cabinets. If anyone wanders this way you won’t be in their immediate line of sight. The hardness of the tile and wooden doors isn’t exactly the most comfortable, but at the same time the lower temperature brings relief to your burning skin and helps you bring your breathing back under control.

So what does it matter if someone found out? Get it together. You’re still a Strider, you can take on anyone (but not like this, you’re screwed). 

You still have your shirt and jeans – you don’t want to think about how much shit would hit the fan if you found yourself pantless – but your shoes are missing. You suppose that’s reasonable enough given that someone had to haul your sorry corpse to the couch, but the fact remains that those are your shoes and you really can’t afford to keep losing shit left and right.

You still can’t remember what happened to get you in this mess, and for all you know some creep caught sight of your fabulous ass, dropped a cinderblock on your head, and whisked you away to his grey perv palace. A creep with a shoe fetish. Who also fucked off with your shades.

You scan your slightly blurry surroundings. The room you’re in is small, but still larger than the dubiously named “kitchen” in your own apartment. This one at least has both a dishwasher and what looks like a working stove. 

But in the corner sits the uncontested jewel of the culinary platform – a tall, stainless steel refrigerator. A real head-turner. The sight makes you want to sing ballads to its shiny plating, sweep that platinum babe off its wheels (Do refrigerators have wheels? Is that a thing?). Gotta prove that you’re committed to this relationship, you aren’t here just to get into its doors. 

That’s not such a bad idea though. The getting through the doors part, not the singing.

A second wave of gnawing want slides through your body, but unlike the earlier thirst it doesn’t immediately render you an oversized headless chicken. This one is slower; it seeps through your bones like heavy molasses and aches from within. Hunger. You were familiar with this one even before the accidents started in earnest. By now you’ve got all the lines memorized, every last step of choreography laser printed into your freaky eyeballs. You need calories, and you need them soon. 

AJ is your go-to. The stuff’s like liquid gold. Nectar of the gods. The rhinestones to your tiara. In short, it’s closer to your sugarcane heart than hairspray is to an Elvis impersonator. Sugar holds you off until you can manage to get your hands on real food. Like... things with more nutritional content than a bag of Doritos. 

But if you don’t start shoving something into your face pretty soon, things start getting in a bad way. You know from experience.

Even after having gone through this before, every time you wake up it’s like new again. Maybe its just because the scenario’s always been different each time. You’ve learned the aftereffects worsen with the severity and extent of injuries – repairing broken bones and replacing ripped tissue takes a lot more out of you than a single clean cut. 

You don’t like a mess.

When the urge for munchies overcomes your paranoia of being caught, you decide to chance it. After a quick peek around the corner of your counter shield, you scoot out into the open. Shuffle across the floor. Sitting at the base of the fridge, you touch a hand to the cool, smudgeless metal. You hesitate. 

The memory of metal comes back to you. Swords belong in the fridge. If you open the door, the swords will come out of the fridge. They will fall, and you remember the ringing in your ears from the times before, the sounds of metal hitting tile. Hitting flesh. The cold bite of frosted steel. Don’t make a sound, don’t make a mess. He’ll know.

You tell yourself to get your shit together.

(It’s been months, don’t go into fits over a goddamn fridge of all things.) You tug the cool handle and stifle a flinch as the door swings open and the light flicks on. 

That’s... a lotta food. A bunch of brightly labeled jars sit in rows on one side, tupperware bins of mystery meals on the other. Milk and more bottles are arranged in the doors. It’s all neat and orderly, no haphazard clutter or stacked cartons of old takeout. No swords.

It also is severely lacking in apple products, so you have to dock it a letter grade out of the sheer indignity. B+, Mystery Stranger. Above average, but we all know you could do better.

Staring up at the gleaming shelves for too long reduces the shapes above you to colorful smears. Red, yellow, green, and white slur together. At some point you give up trying to actually make informed decisions about what you stick inside you, and yank a pretty large jar off the shelf. You nearly lose your balance in doing so, but manage to both maneuver your cargo and swing the door closed at the same time. You allow yourself to feel a glimmer of pride over the feat given that one of your arms is about 60% useless (you don’t let yourself look too close at why that is, playing doctor can come later).

After wriggling around to lean your back against the fridge, you scrutinize the thing you just grabbed. Red, blue, and green label. Big white letters. Is that a J? For some reason the letters are tilting and dripping down the jar and okay you aren’t even going to try anymore. You are going to have to wait a while longer before words start making sense again.

You give a mental shrug. You’re hungry. What’s the worst it can do, kill you?

Haha. So funny.

Unscrewing the lid is stupidly difficult. Once you toss the offending plastic off to the side, you forego searching for utensils in favor of sticking your whole hand inside. Gooey. Thick. A little bit gross.

The feeling of your organs acidifying is enough to make you shove a wad of whatever it is into your mouth.

Peanut butter.

Who keeps peanut butter in the fridge? Serial killers. Only serial killers. But you are lucky your special kidnapping serial killer stranger shelled out an extra few dollars for the good stuff, the thick and creamy kind. 

...You are a little uncertain of how to go about this. Are you supposed to chew it this much? Is that what normal people do? 

For some reason the feeling that you are eating peanut butter the wrong way irks you beyond belief. Even though there is no one to judge you but that pipsqueak crustacean glowering down at you from its lofty position on the sink. It knows.

Licking the sticky streaks off your fingers is a pain. You cover up your failure by shoving more into your mouth. And more. It’s only peanut butter, but it tastes like a slice of heaven in your mouth, if heaven was an undercooked and only slightly congealed pie. Delicious. Unicorns dance on your tongue, tossing glitter confetti over pretentious manes. They are pleased, and demand more.

You make an executive decision to discontinue that train of though before the superpowered ponies grow distinct personalities and attain character development.

Only food now. You’ll crawl out a window or something later.

An onlooker might be concerned that you’re going to choke on the spread given how fast you’re scarfing it down, but you aren’t worried in the slightest. Or more like you aren’t really thinking about anything other than quelling the shivers of hunger running through your bones. 

It’s already taking effect, the aching of your battered body alleviating slightly, fingers regaining enough dexterity to scrape globs away from the underside of the rim before reaching deeper inside. You would have no problem finishing off the jar by yourself. You only feel a little guilty about practically stealing someone else’s food before the thought is pushed out by the demand for moremoremore. They probably won’t even notice it’s gone. And it wasn’t like you made an effort to steal it, it’s not like there’s Fort Knox security up in this crib.

A warm tingly glow spreads through you. Feels nice. 

(What were you worried about again? You can’t remember.)

You miss the distant shift of a lock, a door opening.

You even miss the sound of footsteps, soft at first, then hurried as someone moves through the house.

It’s only when the smack of soles on tile rings through the room that a shock of adrenaline shakes you out of the cuddle fuzzies and drags you unwillingly back to reality.

There’s someone standing there.

You’d forgotten where you were for a moment. In someone else’s territory, with no clear exits, no backup plan, and thoughts that won’t stay in line for two seconds at a time.

You are at a disadvantage.

And they see you.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you don’t want to die again.

* * *

 

Your name is Karkat Vantas.

The kid you’ve spent the last three days pulling your hair out over was missing from where you left him. When you came back upstairs from Kanaya’s visit, his blanket was a twisted ball in the middle of your carpet and somehow you lost the dying idiot.

The good news is, you’ve found him.

But you didn’t anticipate catching him with peanut butter smeared all over his face on your kitchen floor. Or the empty jar that is sent flying at your face, only to bounce off with no lasting marks aside from a stinging nose and a brown streak on your cheek.

Clutching your face with one hand, you hiss under your breath but don’t look away from his position on the floor because there is no way in hell you’re taking your eyeballs off this fucker again. 

He doesn’t make any move to escape or attack again, just stares dazedly up at you. Without warning, he slumps over and you wince at the crack of his skull against the floor.

“Woah, dude. There are little crabs on your socks.”

You are convinced. The universe really is laughing at you, pelting your miserable soul with stale Fruit Loops from above. Dave Strider is the worst Fruit Loop you’ve ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dunno how I feel about this chapter, but I figured it was better to post it and move on than stare at it until my brain melts.


	4. Chapter 4

Hahaha you’re going to die. Maybe chucking the peanut butter jar at the guy who supposedly lives here in lieu of a greeting wasn’t your brightest idea. But what were you supposed to do, introduce yourself and bust out the manly handshakes from your position on the floor? Ha. 

Your brain feels like a bag rainbow Skittles, shaken and sticking to random shit and really not making any sense at all. You have the vaguest feeling of absolute terror right beneath the surface, turning your bones to shards, but the only thing that penetrates the numbness is mild hysteria.

If he wants to murder you with a salad fork– Okay. That’s fine, but he’d better hurry up before you regain enough sense to abscond as fast as your little snapped doll limbs can carry you. 

He’s wearing a sweater and his hair is a dark mess that you can discern even from here, but his face is still blurred just slightly beyond recognition. But those socks. Besides being the clearest part of him waist down, you have to grudgingly admit that they are nearing godteir levels of irony right there. Or maybe he’s just a dorklord.

A hand shakes your shoulder softly. Does he want you to move? Being upright is overrated, and you think you hear yourself tell him so. When Crab-Socks starts making unhappy noises and tries to heave you up, your body slithers out of his hold to resume lovingly embracing the floor. You will not be separated this time. 

If he is trying to drag you off into his perv den, he’s doing a spectacularly poor job of it. 

“–ve. Hey. Pay attention, Strider! Oh, for fuck’s sake, just look at me.” No, you don’t really want to. A pull on your jaw lifts your head up, and you realize that now he’s kneeling down to meet you on eye level. 

The face is familiar, and the scowl resting on it even more so. Wait. You know him. Vantas. Karkat Vantas, the shouty bookstore owner with the pretty grey eyes (that’s obviously your damaged brain talking) and the warm hands that are still resting on your face.

It’s Karkat. Oh thank fuck. It’s okay, it’s going to be fine because you know Karkat would never hurt anyone, not even you. He appears to be waiting for confirmation to a question you hadn’t been paying attention to. You should probably say something. 

“...Sup.” 

Maybe something a little more articulate would’ve been better. 

The worry creasing his forehead deepens into incredulity and such aggravated exasperation that you start to feel a little bit guilty. “You did not. Just say those words. And butcher the English language in my presence. You fuckmunching dickprince. Do you have any idea how fucked up that all was– Didn’t you ever learn to look twice before crossing the road? Not once, twice! Maybe even three times, because why the fuck not?!”

You’re missing some giant pieces of the puzzle here. Only one out of five pizzacats, that is a failing grade and it’s no wonder that you have no clue what he’s talking about.

“...What?”

“What the hell happened. Why are you– urghh. Wait, I’m sorry, don’t answer that. Just. Give me a second.” He buries his face in his hands for a moment. Takes some deep breaths. Looks up again. “I’m such an asshole. How- how do you feel?”

Shitty. You are pretty sure some things are broken. Some very important things, which you’d rather not think about too much right now. “Like I was just on the receiving end of the worst swirly in the history of high school locker rooms. Believe me, Vantas, that’s nothing to sneer at, do you have any idea how long those football players have been waiting for that porcelain medal? They’ve got an intense rivalry going on with the ultimate frisbee team, and you might think frisbee players wouldn’t be rabid swirly freaks, but man would you be surprised–”

He cuts you off with a growl. “Shut up. I am not shitting around with you. Tell me how fucked up you are and I can help you deal with it, but I can’t do jack if you won’t spew something meaningful out of that trap you call a mouth.” His eyebrows are cinched together in the funny way that reminds you of those overacted medical infomercials that used to clog up the airways back home. He’s got the whole “serious concern” shindig going on. 

You’ve never had anyone look at you like that. Mostly because injuries (from sunburns to the cut on your side that you had to close with twenty-one stitches) in the Strider household were treated with indifference and ignored as long as you kept your shit to yourself. Don’t bleed on the sheets, bro.

One side of your mouth tugs up involuntarily and the creases in his forehead deepen. He thinks you’re laughing at him, and you sort of are but not in the way he’s thinking of. 

“Worried ‘bout me, Karkles? It’s okay, I’ll be fine. Just got little banged up or somethin’, don’t really remember the details.” You can’t wipe the lopsided smile away and you’re starting to creep yourself out. Maybe your face is having a stroke. 

As the high of relief gradually fades (you’re 94% sure Vantas doesn’t intend to lock you in a windowless basement), it starts to dawn on you that you’re still in deep shit. Like the first time you’d ever snuck into the community pool with your brothers and Bro shoved you into the deep end just to be a prick. Except on that occasion you’d managed to claw your way back to the rim before the lifeguards noticed anything, and now you have the feeling that the guy in front of you is about three seconds away from blowing the metaphorical whistle as loud as his stout little lungs can bear.

How much did he see?

Karkat rocks back slightly on his heels, and your eyes find themselves conveniently pasted to the ceiling where they can’t possibly meet his concentrated stare. Huh, no popcorn. A couple scratches, but all in all in decent shape. “Nothing? What’s the last thing you remember? Do you know what day it is?”

“Slow down with the rapid fire, amigo. Last I checked the triceratops were all dead and Canada still had maple trees, no need to rush,” you mutter, and your back makes a couple of sick popping sounds as you straighten up a little. “I was gonna grab a new toaster for Sollux to make him stop whining about the old one that Tavros chucked out the window. But then it started pouring and I was like fuck that, so I turned around and... that’s... pretty much it.”

“Alright, aside from the fact that there is no fucking need to throw perfectly good toasters out of the wall holes in your shitty frat, do you honestly not remember getting hit by a car?”

“I don’t live in a frat– wait, what?”

“I take it you don’t. Let’s... have this conversation somewhere that is not my kitchen floor. Can you stand?” You think about it for half a second, then nod because how hard can it really be?

He watches your attempts to scale the counters with doubt in his eyes. Gritting your teeth against the stabby needles in your legs, you give a quiet huff of triumph when you successfully reach the top and twist around to shoot him a smug smirk.

He rolls his eyes, and just barely manages to catch you when you start sliding back to the floor.

There’s a moment of awkward fumbling where you’re clinging to his shoulders and he’s muttering predictable Karkat things under his breath while he tries to right the sinking ship that is the two of you. “Fucking-fuckityfuck. Fuck. See, I knew you couldn’t do it, I knew it–” He cuts off with a yelp when you intentionally rock to the side.

“What couldn’t I do, Karkles honey? Maybe you should repeat that again, ‘cause I don’t remember you talkin’ shit before I started off.” Your voice slips into a Southern cant, and you hope he’s panicking too hard to notice.

“Stop that! Stop it! If we go down I’m going to sit my fat ass right on top of yours, I don’t care how injured you are. Seriously Strider, stop moving before we slip and die a horrible and prolonged death on my shit-pan of a floor.”

“But we’d be together, Sugarbun. Romance isn’t dead,” you whisper with your face mashed into his sweater. He lets out an incomprehensible scream of rage that nearly makes your ears bleed, but you’ve already stopped squirming since you do not, in fact, want to land stranded on your ass on his floor until he takes pity on you.

Poor Crab-Socks. You may be in dire straights, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ever stop being a dick.

He’s shooting you a baleful glare, but readjusts his hold and together the two of you make it out of the kitchen alive. 

This time you glance around a little as you go. There’s a closet, a small open space that’s mostly filled by a wooden table and chairs, and on the far end lies the indistinct outline of what might be a doorway. Probably his bedroom. 

Your feet nudge their way back onto thick carpet as you reenter the hallway, and you belatedly realize the existence of photos hanging on the wall. Karkat shuffles you through before you can take a good look at any particular picture, but you catch a few glimpses of figures huddled together, all with the obligatory messy Vantas hair. Must be genetic. Chibi Karkat still has the worst rat’s nest of the lot, though, with his kinky snarls parading throughout the images.

Karkat hesitates for a moment before depositing you on the couch, seemingly trying to accomplish the feat without causing additional pain to the both of you. You, on the other hand, realize the futility of such an effort and make a decision for him by pitching forward with all the grace and elegance of a sack of potatoes. He goes down with you, and the image of his indignant frowny face powers you through the pained gasps that follow when your ribs pulse dully.

But you made it. You’re back where you started.

You settle back into the cushions, and stealthily shift your knee over the small teeth indentations in the material from this morning. He doesn’t need to find out about his little present just yet.

Vantas inspects your leg and you hiss out a breath and swat his hand when he gives the sensitive flesh a prod. “Color me impressed, Strider. I have no fucking clue how you managed to make it out there on your own, and I’m even more surprised that you haven’t keeled over into death’s twiggy arms by now.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m fine, there’s nothin’ serious– ”

“Last Thursday night you were hit by a multi-ton truck less than a block from here. I was the one to carry you back, so don’t bullshit me on this Dave Strider, nobody gets up and walks away from something like that without a few souvenirs. I saw it.” He won’t raise his head, gaze fixed on a rip in your jeans.

“It was raining and the driver was speeding. And that rampaging asshole,” he continues in a snarl, knuckles drawn taut and white. “Didn’t even get out of the car. Drove off, probably thought I was gonna call the cops on his ass. And I would’ve, but I didn’t catch the licence plates. Sorry.” 

The guy is seriously apologizing to you, after carrying your fucking corpse back to his home, because he didn’t memorize some dipshit’s plates. In a frame of maybe eight seconds. In the rain. After watching some sap get pasted to the tar like a human waffle.

“Hey. Karkat, it’s okay, nobody could be expected to pull off crap like that outta nowhere.” 

He still doesn’t look at you. “... I thought you were gonna die.” He slides a sleeve over his face, and you’ve never seen him look so vulnerable. You’ve seen him when he’s tired, how he sighs a lot and hunches his shoulders to make it through. You’ve seen him worried, with grey eyes lowered and a soft voice. You’ve seen him angry almost as often as not, when he’s pissed at the world, other people (you weren’t exactly helping here), and especially himself (you never understood why). But he’s never been like this.

You are so out of your depth here, you don’t have prayer of delicacy so you just sorta stare at him like a petrified block of wood and hope he doesn’t notice the difference. “I thought you were gonna die on my couch and I didn’t know what to do or how to help or how to make it all stop. And you didn’t wake up for days, so... Fuck, sorry, I’m just relieved you’re alive.” And he gives this miserable little laugh at the end. Shit. Abort, abort. Distraction. Uhh, try talking again, because you are clean out of cards at this point in the game, and bluffing your way through the feelings round is about all you can try for. 

“Hey, man. It’ll be fine. I’m alive, and okay, it hurts like fuck but I’m still kicking. You did alright by me, dude. It’s okay.” He wipes at his face again, but he sits up straighter, which you think is a good sign. 

As long as this train is leaving Feels Station that is alright by you, you are not equipped to handle this. “So you brought me back, huh? Well I suppose you’ve earned some unironic Strider gratitude for not leaving the extra speed bump on the pavement. One lap dance, maybe two. Three would be pushing it Vantas, so don’t even try.” He gives a disgusted snort and pokes you again. Rude. “So this is your place? Not too shabby. More floorspace than I imagined.”

“Yeah. The shop’s right beneath it, so the top floor is bigger than it looks from the outside. It was a goddamn miracle I didn’t drop you coming up the stairs.”

“Wait, your dinky bookstore had a second story? You’re full of surprises today.” He still has a little frown, but you swear there was a hint of pride mixed in.

“It’s been like this the whole time, not my problem your stupid shades and douchbagginess blinded you to what was really obvious to anyone else with working eyeballs. Oh, yeah, that reminds me.” He abruptly scoots off the couch and disappears down the hallway. Before you have time to wonder at what the hell he’s doing, he’s back with his arms full.

“This is your shit. Take it.” Sweet Jegus, those are your babies, your babies. You cradle your shades in your arms for a moment before snapping them onto your face. Like they’d never left. 

The darkness immediately loosens tension you didn’t know you had in your muscles, and best off all cuts out the shimmery brightness that was killing your eyes. There’s a little scratch on the left rim that you’re sure wasn’t there before, but all in all, pretty good for surviving an auto collision. They’ve made Daddy proud.

It hits you that he’s had a pretty gander at your lookers since you started your unceasing torrent of word vomit at his face. You mentally cringe, because that shit makes you uncomfortable as hell and breaks the first commandment of the Strider Code in one fell swoop. Bro would be pissed. But he’s not here this time, you don’t have to worry about it. So stop worrying. Stop.

Karkat’s prattling on about something. You tell yourself to stop zoning out so much.

“–n washed like three times and your shoes still have funky blotches on them. And your phone lived. Here.” You take it, turning over the little shiny device in your hands.

“...Thanks. Hey, just wondering, ‘cause like I actually prefer what you did instead of the other way around but... why didn’t you just call 911 and leave? You didn’t have to deal with any of this.” 

He pauses, and nearly makes eye contact through the dark aviators. 

“You were wrong. Everything was off. I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t the right choice. But there’s something wrong with you that has nothing to do with being hit by a hunk of metal on wheels.”

Oh. Yep, you’re chill, you’re chill. You’re like a cucumber in Siberia, and that’s totally not icy panic flooding your gut.

He leans closer, and for once you can’t read his face. You hope he can’t read yours. “Your spine was fucking shattered, Dave, I could feel it. But your legs were still moving.”

You feel numb.

“I’m not a doctor. Never took any anatomy classes, got no fancy degree. But that wasn’t normal. And right now, given that you aren’t on life support and seem to have no problem moving and talking and sitting up straight and ingesting food that doesn’t come through a fucking tube... I would say that’s downright unnatural.”

A little niggling sensation bleeds through you softly, making your chest ache. Nostalgia. Or regret, one of the two. You sort of liked this town. You aren’t ready to go. You don’t want to go back to being alone. Before, you were so relieved that it was Karkat that found you, you were in Karkat’s home, because Karkat was safe. 

But now you sort of wish that it was anyone else, because you like Karkat. He doesn’t hide anything. All his emotions are up-front and etched on his face in high-definition. You instinctively trust him even though you probably shouldn’t. (Stupid, right? You guys aren’t even friends.)  His shop is warm and he makes you laugh. Sometimes. 

You really don’t want to hate him for this.

You don’t want him to be afraid of you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dave. Stop jumping to conclusions, we already went over this.  
> This fic was supposed to be three chapters long and top at 5000 words. Oops.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm mad at myself for not updating sooner. But no, I promise I haven't forgotten about this, I just buried myself with lack of planning and procrastination. But I feel much better now that I actually sat down and wrote it.  
> And thank you so much, people who commented! I am complete crap at responding, but I saw them all and they made me want to sing cheesy music and write lots more! So I did! <3

For once, he’s not talking. The quiet is almost sickening.

Your leg just barely brushes his on the edge of the cushion, and you can feel the slight warmth carry through the air. You’d almost forgotten - almost - how much you fucking hate those insufferable plastic icons of douchebaggery perched on his nose. He looks older now. And like a bigger asshole.

It’s been a while since you’ve seen Strider look this distant even though you aren’t really sure when he opened up to you at all in the first place; the change was so subtle you didn’t notice at the time. Now the difference feels like a jagged chalk line was abruptly drawn between the two of you, straight down the center of the couch and onto your ugly carpet. Even his breathing is just an infinitesimal bit tighter in a way you hadn’t noticed before. Maybe you’d been a little too intense in answering him. 

But you weren’t wrong.

He might be on edge, but the blankness on his face doesn’t exactly portray shock or disbelief or any other normal reaction to the knowledge that by all rights he should be the town’s newest streetside mural teaching little schoolchildren about road safety. Something’s going on and he knows and he also knows you don’t know and he’s keeping you in the dark on purpose isn’t he, the prick. 

Well, he’s going to fucking tell you. You’ve wasted days of your life and close to a jug of washing detergent over him, so you deserve it. Yes. Confront him like the mature adult you are. With finesse and authority.

...The awkward silence proves insurmountable. You cannot best it. Fuck.

Luckily, he solves the problem for you.

“Welp. The jig is up. Congratulations, Detective Vantas, you did it, you caught the scary widdle freak and now you can give yourself a pat on the back. Message received. Just do me a favor and hold off with rounding up the mob just yet. Torches and pitchforks do things to my delicate skin, man, let’s just forget that part, m’kay?” His lifeless voice is colored by a thin skin of bravado, and to top it off he’s got that irritating half-assed smirk thing just hanging off his face and it rubs you the wrong way. But you digress. You still haven’t a fucking clue what he’s talking about. “I can be out of here by tomorrow, no big deal.”

“What.” That one word seems to unglue your jaw and the familiar flurry of words erupts from your mouth like the most magnificent of metaphorical volcanoes to grace this living room. And this room has seen a lot of shit. It will be like the reenactment of Pompeii as your anger, bottled up over the last week, cascades down with the wrath of the gods onto the civilians below. Or just Dave Strider.

“No, no , N-FUCKING-O, what the hell? No. You do not get to skip away and leave me in a pit of my own dissolving cranial fluids. Do you honestly think that I’ll willingly shove my head up my rear long enough for you to ollie out to the looped soundtrack of Frozen? There will be no pointless absconding, you complete squeakerfuck, because I’m not letting you waltz out of my domain without answering some basic fucking questions, in alignment with what most normal people associate with basic fucking courtesy. You aren’t fucking Casper. If you turn the consistency of boiled marshmallows and sink through my floorboards I will still follow you, Strider. If I have to buy a fishtank with a lid to confine your ass to like time-out in kindergarten, so help me I will do it if it’ll make you cut the crap and just... just talk to me. Because I don’t understand anything anymore, and that is completely your fault.” 

Your words trail off as breathing becomes something you actually have to focus on. You feel vindicated at seeing half an eyebrow raised slightly above the rim of his black eye censors. You might have to consult your Strider Facial Cues Handbook later, but you are reasonably confident that he is at least shocked by your outburst. Good. His idea was stupid and he needs to acknowledge your thinking superiority as soon as possible. 

A few huffs later you shoot him a sideways glare. “And this is Oregon, Strider. We don’t have pitchforks. And have you even met any of us? The ability of the townsfolk to amass into a frothing mob is equivalent to that of a flock of one-legged chickens. We may be incapable of mobbing altogether depending on the weather.” 

Dave opens his mouth, then closes it again without a word. Nervously runs a hand through his hair that still has rust flecks caught in the strands. Drops his gaze to his lap.

“Okay.” 

The single word is quiet, like he doesn’t know what to do with it now that it’s out there. But the idea that he isn’t going to vanish in a puff of smoke if you turn around reassures you nonetheless.  
Great. Now you can finally ask him something without feeling like you’re attempting to extract your incisors through your nasal cavity. After a brief hesitation, you decide to fuck it and go for the gold. Dancing around the bloated dead crab in the room never served you well in the past.

“So. What exactly is up with you. What– what are you?”

“Uh, human? What do you mean?” 

“You know what I mean! Normal people and cars do not mix, but you seem... well, you’re a little more gross now but you’re not comparable to a salted slug.” He gives a breathy half-snort, muffled by the fact that he’s still studiously admiring the smoky upholstery instead of looking at you. “Are you like a– um, are you–” 

There are times you wish that maybe you had better control over what comes out of your mouth. 

Then there are times that you want to rip out your vocal cords with a hot poker and surgically remove all your teeth because that would be a much better option than letting yourself open your facespewer around other sentient creatures. You can feel the words coming. You can feel them, but you cannot stop such a vital staple of the universe that you’re cursed with.

“–Are you a fairy?” Fuck, there it is, you are in pain now. 

He slowly raises his eyes to meet yours. 

Then the idiot collapses back against the arm of the couch, convulsing in what you are positive is a sudden seizure and not something stupid. Like laughing at you.

“Stop. Shut up,” you growl and swat at him from the side because it really looks like he’s dying again, just at your expense this time. He feebly waves a hand in your direction, but it only rises a handful of inches before flopping back onto his chest pathetically. 

“Do I look,” he gasps out, “like a fucking fairy to you? Shit, ow, you made my ribs hurt.”

“How am I supposed to know what fairies look like? It’s not something I usually have to worry about! I don’t know, it was just a guess. Oh, fuck off, it wasn’t that amusing. Ugh.” You compose your Completely Unamused Face while he takes deep breaths and fights down the last few snickers. He only erupts into another bought of awful snorts when he catches sight of your imposing visage. It sounds a lot like a beached whale. With pneumonia. Why does he find everything you do so hilarious. Why. It’s really not.

“Answer the question, Strider,” you groan, and somehow resist the urge to throw a pillow at him.

Dave shuffles back into a more upright position, and visibly sobers up. His lips are still quirked up crookedly on one side, though, as he shifts to face you. “I’m really not a fairy, Vantas. They haven’t gotten around to inviting me into their woodland tribe, but I’m sure you’ve had plenty of experience after living around... y’know, trees and shit.”

“Forget the fairy thing! I’m intensely regretting bringing it up, so if we’d move along I‘d appreciate it. To speak your degenerate language, it would be ‘chill’ if you conveniently carved that memory out of your gray matter entirely and answered the other question I asked before this train crashed and burned, destroying hundreds of innocents lives along with my sanity.”

Dave’s face goes carefully blank again, and there he goes, staring at your knee or something else that isn’t immediately connected to your suffering eyeballs. He gives a tired shrug. “I dunno man. To be honest your guess is almost as good as mine at this point.” You don’t really know what to make of that, because he pretty much just told you he’s just as clueless as you are. Aimless frustration tingles under your skin, muted yet irritatingly directionless. Your nemesis the universe has not only dumped a crapload of the seemingly supernatural on your sorry head, but then also snatched away any explanation. Maybe Dave is also at odds with the universe. You would not be overly surprised. Dave Strider is at odds with lots of things.

“It’s not like it’s just staring me in the face,” he continues on in a nervous mumble, apparently taking your silence for suspicion. “It’s not like I’ve started categorizing everyone I know by blood type or have a desperate hankering for brains. Brains are pretty cool though. I had one once. In a jar, I mean. I’ve always had the one in my head. So... two brains. But that’s not that many in the scheme of things, all the zombie flicks have brains being thrown left and right across the screen, being eaten and blown into tiny chunks and baked into lasagna, and at some point you just have to wonder at the fact that, damn, that’s a lot of brains–” He breaks off in a cough. “Just two brains. Yeah. I haven’t passed out or become a magical furry on the full moon. I think fairy tales are full of shit anyway, so I don’t think it’s that surprising that none of it’s helping me figure out jack, because there’s nothing to figure out.” 

He deflates a little and draws a knee up with some effort to smoosh his face against. “Maybe I am a fairy. I don’t fucking know.” 

“You’re not a fairy. Okay? Yes? Wonderful.” He looks like he might be cold, and you know you’re freezing, so you scan the room for life-saving articles of warmth. Target sighted. You bend down and stretch your arms out as far as possible in hopes that you can reach the crumpled blanket that Strider ungratefully dumped on the floor... hours ago? Time doesn’t even make sense anymore. He watches as you predictably fail, and curse your stubby arms because it is their fault, not yours that you were unsuccessful. After a bout of graceful failing and scrambling you retreat back onto the soft cushions with your conquest, which you proceed to fling half of sloppily over Strider. 

He looks a little more pathetic like this, fumbling with bruised fingers at the thick cloth draped over his head. Once he emerges, he gives you a subtle look that you’re choosing to interpret as incredible thankfulness instead of a more likely expression such as indignity. His hair has already been terminally fucked up out of it’s normal obsessively maintained arrangement. That moose has already been dismembered and set on fire, there’s no reason for him to be pouting at you.

He wraps it around his hunched shoulders tightly and nestles his face in it until only his shades and up are visible.

Well. You feel a little guilty about prying. Maybe you should just drop it, it’s not like it’s your problem and he still looks like an uncomfortable ball of barely concealed nerves.

But then you remember how slick and warm his wrist was when you were carrying him up the stairs, how he didn’t make a sound even when your fingers slipped and you almost dropped him. You remember how numb you were when you dabbed at his head with a rag and then he didn’t wake up and how alone you felt when you were on the floor, on your knees in the dark scrubbing at the black drops of blood on the carpet because you were too afraid to turn the lights on and see things you didn't want to see, and too fixated on getting the red out of everything you could reach to stop.

He’s scared by the things you do and say, even though he never was before. You don’t understand the change. 

You’re not scared of him. But he does scare you. There’s a difference, and you don’t want to be in the dark anymore.

You forcibly unclench your fingers from the wad of pleather they had tightened around, pinching and stretching the soft waxy material beneath you. Your knuckles stand out stark pale against your darker skin, and it sort of hurts. You’re relieved that the next words you force out are even, balanced enough that maybe he won’t pick up on the fact that your stomach is folding in on itself. “Dave. What does happen that’s different?”

At first you think that he’s given up on answering you, but then he raises his head out of the gray puddle slightly. “I dunno. I’m normal. Most of the time. If my life was a puppet show, forty eight out of the forty nine puppets would be normal. Then the other would be a smuppet and would proceed to fuck up everything for the other forty eight. Just to be a dick.” He shifts, and sighs when you don’t say anything. He talks more when you don’t interrupt. Just listening to his run-on sentences and tangents seems to encourage him to loosen up a little more.

“Pretty much the biggest difference is that a lot of bad things can happen, like a lot of bad things, but I can walk away when others can’t.” He rolls his head to the side to shoot you a rare half smile. Yet it looks strained on his face, like there’s a disconnect between what he wants to convey and what he’s actually emoting. It looks almost bitter. “You get it.” You do, and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. You decide right then that you’re done figuring shit out for today. 

Silence descends again. It’s not the best silence you’ve ever shared (Kanaya holds the top three instances with ease), but it’s definitely not the worst. It’s even sort of comfortable, but that might just be because you are so damn tired you literally cannot give a shit anymore.

The sun is still high in the sky, and you watch the golden spots leak through the holes in your drapes and drip across the wall in front of you. The air that creeps in from around the crooked window behind you is too weak to carry a breeze, but still brings with it the fresh smell of rain and trees and outside. 

You used to spend a lot of time outside, you think, but you don’t really anymore. You can’t remember if you liked it or not. You usually used the outdoors as a barrier between you and people who you didn’t want to talk to, but then they all grew up and became desensitized to things like plants and dirt, and the whole thing became pretty pointless. The combined effect of people plus the weather reminded you of how much you hated sitting on a mound of dirt after it rained (this was also a delicate art, of which you were definitely not the master – downpours rendered anthills nigh indistinguishable from benign dirt mounds) to avoid people, soaking your pants and becoming increasingly distressed at how quickly people found you. You even switched bushes, a change you were most displeased with. They found you anyway.

At least, there was Kanaya even back then. She was tolerable, but she refused to sit on dirt piles with you. She did give you free anti-itch cream for the ant bites, though.

You wonder if Dave is an outdoors person. You slide your gaze over to him. He’s still watching the wall with the sun patches. You open your mouth to ask him, but it turns into a yawn. You’re tired. He looks pretty exhausted too, even though he’s just woken up from an incredibly long slumber party without you.

He’s still got his shades on, even though there’s only natural lighting in the room. Does the brightness hurt his eyes? Or does he just feel uncomfortable with you around? That bothers you a little. Yeah, his eyes are kinda freaky, you admit it. Definitely not something you see every day. But you aren’t going to faint dramatically across the floor like a stereotypical damsel in a black and white film. 

You wonder if his hair and eyes have anything to do with his funky starfish powers. You forgot to ask him about that. 

You wonder if Dave Strider is part starfish.

You wonder if Dave Strider is a starfish-fairy. That would be cool. Starfish are fun, but not as fun as crabs.

You wonder if Dave Strider will ever let you see his eyes again.

* * *

Your name is Dave Strider, and you are too tired too be upset over the fact that Karkat Vantas has his head resting on your shoulder. You are not a pillow, you are a proud fucking ninja warrior. But since you’re pretty sure he’s asleep, and you sort of owe him enough to not shove him off like the little asshole you are– he can stay. He’s also pretty warm, and that’s nice since your body temperature has decided to drop from “We’re Burning in Hell, Motherfucker” to “Hell Hath Frozen Over, Welcome to the Titanic, Dipshit” and he’s like a soft -albeit heavy- space heater. And you sort of feel really bad about how stressed out he is and that it’s pretty much on you.

You exhale softly through your nose, and continue staring straight ahead as you tentatively rest the side of your head against his. His hair is tangled, but soft. You bet yours is pretty nasty and nope, you don’t want to think about that sad fact anymore. It would make the Marines cry, that’s how much of a tragedy it is. 

Karkat shifts under you, and you immediately freeze, adopting survival tactics much like those of the white-tailed deer or some sort of lizard. Maybe if you pretend you’re asleep he won’t notice that you put your face next to his face, and maybe you won’t have to explain that you weren’t homing in on his neck either, you really aren’t a vampire.

You nearly die when he opens his mouth, but he just mumbles a fragmented string of words remarkably clearly into your shoulder. “Starfish aren’t fish, that’s wrong... They aren’t...” Good to know. Maybe he could’ve told you that before your heart tried to eject itself out of your mouth. He just turns his head a little and settles back against you.

It takes a while to calm down again, but you aren’t feeling like a chiseled Strider ice sculpture anymore, so that’s good. You feel a little melty, actually. Like a grilled cheese, but still somehow cold. You don’t need to listen to physics. Maybe your bones are made of Jell-O. 

Random shit like that occupies your thoughts as the minutes tick on.

Right before you drop into the pit of your subconscious, you decide to tell Karkat something. Something important that you’ve really been keeping in all day. You lean a little closer, open your mouth– and then forget it. It was probably going to be something boring like “thanks” anyway, and you don’t need to waste energy on something that isn’t great. So you mentally shrug, and fall back on the second most important thing you’ve been wanting to tell him.

“Hey. I really love your socks. Okay? Okay, that’s it. G’night, Karkat.”

 

You gently press your cheek back into his hair. Breathe in. Breathe out. You close your eyes and hope it doesn’t all come back quite yet.

 

You only dream of sitting on a hard tile floor, cold washing over your face and seeping into your bones. You stare at the open double doors above your head, watch them knock back slightly on their hinges with every inhale of stale air you take.

 

The refrigerator is empty.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's what happens when I don't sleep; my characters get really funky and don't make sense anymore.  
> Also - Kanaya is not an actual coffee fairy. Fairies probably don't exist in this AU. (Unless you want her to be one. Then she totally is.)  
> Feel free to critique my writing. This is the longest thing I've ever written, so I really need to work on stuff. Like things making sense. And pacing. Dave spent an entire chapter crawling on the floor after getting the munchies, what the hell.  
> P.S.- Are they cursing too much? I've never dropped an f-bomb in my life, but they're both pretty loose around the mouth, so. Eh.


End file.
